But organizers maintained that the concert Sunday was successful because it generated massive publicity for financially strapped American farmers, and they pledged to continue fundraising efforts.

Though reports of how much money the concert raised varied widely, Farm Aid had raised no more than $10 million in private donations by Monday, far short of the $50 million target.

But Farm Aid ran into substantial obstacles well beyond organizers`

control.

The devastating earthquakes in Mexico diverted worldwide attention from the concert.

The organizers faced a much more difficult promotional task than other recent benefit concerts. In the Live Aid concert, which helped raise $40 million toward famine relief in Africa in July, organizers relied on the dramatic visual image of the dimension of starvation there. Farm Aid promoters were dealing with issues that could not summon such immediate emotion and sympathy.

The agriculture crisis was born out of a complex array of political and social problems not as well defined as the pictures of world hunger.

Moreover, the promoters of Farm Aid set an ambitious goal of $50 million in proceeds without any apparent foundation for that target.

Mark Randal, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said statistics from the New York public relations firm promoting Farm Aid indicated that the concert had raised $7 million to $10 million in private donations Sunday, not including corporate contributions, money from broadcasting rights and ticket sales.

Repeated attempts to contact officials of the public relations firm, the Howard Bloom Agency, were unsuccessful.

Other promoters of the concert were quoted as saying the extravaganza had raised less than $10 million in total contributions.

Randal said it could be several days before a precise accounting of the proceeds is completed.

The money has been earmarked for needy individual farmers, legal assistance, job retraining, counseling and publicizing the problems of the farmers.

Whatever the donations total, country singer Willie Nelson, organizer of the event, said the concert was merely the beginning of musicians` efforts to raise money for farmers.

And Randal said the concert achieved its main objective of focusing national attention on the plight of American farmers.

``We think it was a raging success from the angle it increased the public`s awareness of the problems of agriculture,`` Randal said. ``There is no question that it accomplished that.``

But while entertainers focused public attention on the farm problem, some of them rankled agriculture officials in the process by endorsing a controversial farm bill pending in Congress.

Nelson and some other singers used the concert as a forum to voice their support of a farm aid bill sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Ia.).

The Harkin bill proposes to set a price support loan rate for corn and soybeans and impose production limits on farmers, if the limits are approved in a referendum.

Harkin, in an interview Sunday, said he believed the concert would help sentiment in Congress for passage of a farm bill.

``After all of the rhetoric that the politics should stay out of the concert, we are disappointed and surprised that the politicians did (keep politics out of the concert) and the entertainers didn`t,`` said Jim Altemus, spokesman for the Illinois Farm Bureau, which opposes the Harkin bill. ``You could say we`re disappointed, shocked and disillusioned.``